Books blog + Siddhartha Mukherjee | The Guardianhttp://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog+siddhartha-mukherjee
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Out in paperback: October non-fictionhttp://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2011/oct/18/out-in-paperback-michael-holroyd-alex-ross
Drugs wars, ballet and music lead this month's non-fiction titles, alongside biographies of cancer and 'lesser lives', from Siddhartha Mukherjee and Michael Holroyd<p>As the weather in the UK turns autumnal a welcome opportunity to travel south in the genially sharp-eyed company of Michael Holroyd. His latest &quot;biographical investigation into the lives of the not-terribly-rich and only-slightly-famous of the early 20th century&quot; is <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/data/book/unclassified/9780701185343/a-book-of-secrets-illegitimate-daughters-absent-fathers">A Book of Secrets, (vintage) </a>a tripartite biography of three women whose lives intersected with the splendour of the Villa Cimbrone on the Amalfi coast in southern Italy: Eve Fairfax, fianc&eacute;e of the second Lord Grimthorpe who bought Cimbrone in 1904, Catherine Till, who believed her real father was Grimthorpe's only son and the novelist Violet Trefusis, who is best known today for her affair with Vita Sackville-West. </p><p>&quot;If this sounds complicated, then that's because it's supposed to, &quot; <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/nov/13/book-secrets-michael-holroyd-review">explained reviewer Kathryn Hughes</a>. &quot;Holroyd's main point is to create one of those states that exist in dreams where fathers, lovers, brothers and mothers merge into one another and time and place collide … and just as his earlier biographies captured the desire to read about lost lives in all their teeming detail, so in his Book of Secrets he has once again caught the present moment, what we might call the post-biographical mood, perfectly.&quot;</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2011/oct/18/out-in-paperback-michael-holroyd-alex-ross">Continue reading...</a>BooksCultureSiddhartha MukherjeeTue, 18 Oct 2011 11:14:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2011/oct/18/out-in-paperback-michael-holroyd-alex-rossRobert Harding Picture Library L/AlamyCentre of Secrets. . . Villa Cimbrone, where the lives of Michael Holroyd's three women intersected. Photograph: Robert Harding Picture Library L/AlamyRobert Harding Picture Library L/Alamy'Dreamy and heat-hazed' . . . Villa Cimbrone. Photograph: Robert Harding Picture Library L/AlamyNicholas Wroe2011-10-18T11:14:00Z